Babies babble in just the right way

From San Diego at the Society for Neuroscience meeting.

A baby’s adorable babbling brings smiles to parents and grandparents, but it’s also a topic of serious study for scientists examining how people develop their language skills (SN: 5/27/00, p. 344: http://new.sciencenews.org/20000527/bob1.asp). There’s a debate, for example, as to whether babbling is a precursor to language or just

random sounds produced as the infant learns how to move its mouth.